Is it democratic to impose democracy? Can you choose not to choose your government? These paradoxical conundrums are usually confined to discussions involving drunken students and tiresome academics (or is that the other way round?). But now they have emerged for real in Bhutan, where the Wangchuk dynasty has ruled as an absolute monarchy since 1903.

The Dragon King, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, announced earlier this month that he wants to give his people the gift of a democratically elected parliament. The trouble is, they don't want it. Where now they have a united country with a widely loved leader, they fear they will get a divided country with parties and factions pursuing their own interests. Looking at western democracies, they have a point.

So it seems whatever happens, the country will have a legitimacy gap. Keep the monarchy and the people will not have any choice about what policies their leader pursues; impose democracy and they will have been denied their choice of political system. Whatever you choose, you have no choice.

But perhaps the problem is not insoluble. We are used to thinking that the state derives its authority from its democratic mandate. But the philosophical tradition that bears the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's tract, the Social Contract, explains the legitimacy of the state in broader, more flexible terms.

Once upon a time, Rousseau says, humans were free and wild, noble savages who needed no rulers or governments. Now, alas, that Eden is lost, and without states, we would have what Hobbes called the "war of all against all". So to protect our interests we do a deal. We pool our sovereignty with that of others, entrusting the state to pursue not individual interests, but the general will. As long as the state keeps its side of the bargain, the contract is fair and binding.

Social contract theories vary in detail, but the broad tradition leaves the specifics of the contract open. And it is surely possible to argue that in Bhutan, the monarch has honoured the deal better than a parliament would. And if a state is obliged to follow the general will, then in Bhutan the greater desire is for the current system, not the power to make ongoing, regular choices.

All this, however, remains academic for the minority Hundu Lhotshampa population, 100,000 of whom were expelled from the country as "illegal aliens" in the late 1980s. The power to choose not to choose is one they can only dream of.